


A Glass To Easy Choices

by Noccalula



Category: Daredevil (Comics), Daredevil (TV), Marvel
Genre: Blow Jobs, Cunnilingus, Especially when your fuck buddy is the Punisher, Except there's always strings, F/M, No Strings Attached, POV Second Person, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Reader-Insert, Rough Sex, Shameless Smut, Vaginal Sex, but i digress
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-16
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2018-06-08 20:25:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6872164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Noccalula/pseuds/Noccalula
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>You’ve got your demons; he’s got his. That’s the point in the end, you figure. Nobody pushes, nobody asks too many questions, nobody tries to make a square peg fit in a metaphorical round hole and nobody’s keeping score. </i>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <i>You know his wife is dead. He knows your ex is in jail. The only time you ever bothered establishing any preemptives was making sure you both understood these facts and all that that meant for the two of you in your… arrangement. The first meeting between you was more like fighting than fucking anyway.</i>
</p>
<p>

You and Frank Castle have intersecting paths. It's only natural that you get it on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Glass To Easy Choices

**Author's Note:**

> "Who am I to tell you to come down? Lucky that my palate still prefers a legal poison. Who am I to tell you to come down? Sit back and raise a glass, a glass to easy choices." - Dessa, The Man I Knew
> 
> This is my first stab at second-person smut, so go easy on me. As usual, it ended up about... oh, thirty times longer than it was supposed to be. 
> 
> I can't be the only one who fell all the fuck the way in love with Jon Bernthal's broken-nosed, smart-ass black eyed Frank Castle.

 

You’ve got your demons; he’s got his. That’s the point in the end, you figure. Nobody pushes, nobody asks too many questions, nobody tries to make a square peg fit in a metaphorical round hole and nobody’s keeping score.

You know his wife is dead. He knows your ex is in jail. The only time you ever bothered establishing any preemptives was making sure you both understood these facts and all that that meant for the two of you in your… arrangement. The first meeting between you was more like fighting than fucking anyway – you were working your usual shift, having had a much more lucrative time at this bar than at the last and since the goddamn Punisher killed your asshole boss as collateral in an attack on the Kitchen Irish. Without half the funds from this joint going straight back into “the family” it was a lot easier for you, the other bartenders and the new defacto manager to pull more than your usual from the overall earnings; still, nothing gold could stay, and you knew it was only a matter of time before someone upstairs untied the knots on the bar and defaulted it back to the bank it was bought from seeing as how any relatives who could claim it were as d-e-a-d dead as the boss himself.

You thought of him from time to time, the miserable old letch. If you knew where he was buried, you’d have long since hauled yourself down there and pissed on his fresh headstone.

The Punisher was something of a national celebrity nowadays – escaped convict, spree killer, polarizing figure. Half the country wanted him strung up for every murder and charged for every piece of destroyed property; the other half wanted to give him directions to their city and dinner for his troubles. He was a hero. He was a villain. He was the devil himself; he was an angel of vengeance.

What he /actually/ was, was sitting in your bar with a ball cap pulled down low and his big boots perched on the foot rail, sending off every signal of “I’m drinking alone, fuck off” he could possibly send. Your coworker had tried to lay down the preliminaries of flirting with the lone, mysterious customer when the rest of the bar settled into its usual ebb and flow of regular patrons and got iced into oblivion, stomping back over and demanding you take the side of the bar with the crabby asshole in the hat. Of course he’d chosen your bar for the anonymity – it was a dive, one that was now blessedly free of Irish mafia presence and now just held the usual flotsam and jetsam off the street – and you respected that.

You’d brought him his second shot when he glanced up at you under the bill of that hat, and you utterly shocked yourself with how well you carried off unaffected indifference. It was him. His mug had been plastered all over the city – what was this fucking idiot doing still in the city!? – and there was no mistaking those nearly coal-black eyes over that nose, somehow still prominent even with the bridge broken into damn near nothingness. Your eyes stayed on his, then on the knuckles of the big hand wrapped around the beer he was still nursing.

It was stupid, how fast you were in bed together.

He’s like getting hit by a fucking freight train, which is to say he’s big and fast but alarmingly light on his feet. You know more about him than you should thanks to the media coverage so you can assume this is a learned skill from his special ops days – the conversation only comes sometimes and you always feel like it’s one-sided, unfair. You don’t even remember if there was a moment where you both verbalized what was going to happen, just that he came upstairs to the office with you when the night was over and fucked you against the wall, the door, the floor, and on the desk before it was all said and done.

Tonight, he texts you a motel address from a burner phone. You know not to save the number – he won’t contact you from this one again.

When your cab drops you off, someone in the parking lot is blasting “Magic Stick.” You knock on the door of the indicated room and you hear his dog bark twice – Max, the gray pit bull he’s had as long as you’ve known him, admittedly not long. He opens the door without so much as a grunt but his hair is wet and he smells like he just stepped out of the shower, generic soap. His pants ride low on his deeply cut hips and you’re only just in the door when he’s got it slammed, locked and chained, making his way over with purpose.

“Hey.”

He gets it out before both of those big hands are on your neck, your jaw and he’s tilting your head back to get his mouth at your skin, his exhale jagged as your own breath hitches in your chest. Max skitters back to his makeshift bed of a towel on the floor, halfway to greeting you when he realizes you’re indisposed; you don’t notice. It’s always like this – like you’re drowning in a desire bigger than yours or his – every time you’re together. You’ve reckoned that this is the only reason this is even happening. It’s not like either of you were at a loss for being able to get laid and yet you’d both chosen not to, either out of lingering feelings of loyalty to long gone partners or a general refusal to be this vulnerable with anyone.

It doesn’t feel like vulnerability for him, or at least you don’t think it would. He’s firmly in charge from the word go and that hasn’t ever changed.

You’ve learned not to wear anything you value too much to meet him; Frank Castle has left not only a trail of bodies in his wake but a veritable valley of shredded underthings to go along with it. Regardless, you still try to beat him to getting your bra off in case he’s even less patient than usual and just opts to tear the two sides apart behind your back. You’d complain – and you do when taking stock of your bras and panties after the fact – but in the moment, it’s hotter than hot. Tonight’s no exception: his hands are under your shirt, rubbing thick callouses up your back until he’s at the clasp and trying to tear it away from itself in a manner that suggested he was once probably pretty good at it, if only he still had the patience.

Swatting his arms away, you reach back and spare yourself another bra-buying trip, shirking the thing off and dropping it onto the floor.

“Don’t know why you even wear one’a those things here,” he growls as both of those massive, scarred hands go straight to your tits, your shirt riding up his forearms.

The feeling of his rough skin against your peaked nipples sends a jolt straight to your clit and you sway a little in his grasp, light-headed with the feeling. He’s not much for preamble and the quicker he can get you out of your clothes, the happier he is; your shirt goes up and over your head and suddenly he’s dipping down to catch your nipple in his mouth as his big fingers deftly undo the button on your jeans, yank them down with your panties going along for the ride. He’s already rock hard and you can feel his nearly unmanageable girth against your abdomen through his pants as he urges you to step out of the fallen fabric.

“ _C’mon_ , girl,” he says impatiently, and you’re instantly twice as wet.

You’re not a ‘good girl’. This isn’t the first time your pussy has overruled your better judgment. Fuck the mass murderer who’s wanted in all states? Well, if he’s gonna growl shit like “c’mon girl” in your ear, squeeze your tits in his hands and yank off your clothes like he’s starving and you’re the last meal for miles then yes, you’re going to fuck the mass murderer who’s wanted in all states. As a matter of fact, you’re gonna blow the mass murderer who’s wanted in all states. Your knees hit that dirty carpet and his gruff little exhale of a groan before you’ve even touched him has you swelling and wet, clit throbbing as your core muscles tighten, trying to find some sort of relief that’s not coming just yet.

“Damn,” is all he says, a whisp of a growl past his lips, as you palm his cock through the fabric of his pants, his dark eyes fixed on you down in front of him. The power play here is half of what makes this so delicious – don’t misunderstand, he’s built for this sort of thing, big and agile and preternaturally perceptive to what you need at the time, but the fact that he’s just so good at taking lead translates so sinfully well to fucking.

Someone is playing something with a heavy bass outside your window. It catches his attention for only a moment as you notice his muscles go taut, his guard go up, but he doesn’t stop you when you unzip his pants and pull them down past his hips, catching in a bunch somewhere around his muscular thighs. His cock springs free, bobbing heavily towards you and there’s no hesitation when you go straight in to lick and suck his balls, one hand resting against the hot steel of the muscles in his leg and the other at the base of his impressive erection, keeping it from clubbing you in the face while you work to get both his boys in your mouth.

You’re a very talented girl, it doesn’t take you long.

You feel his shudder under your palms, hear his exhaled growl, feel that big hand fist up into your hair just shy of painfully. There’s an extra shot of excitement at the reaction, feeling this big, monolith of a man start coming unfurled out of his statue state; you’re even wetter at the notion. It’s a game, almost, to see how much noise you can make him make – he’s a talker when you get him going but it’s not easy to get there.

He tastes a little salty still but mostly your senses are occupied with how his damp skin still smells like soap, how he smells like Clean Man and you’re a little irritated and a little turned on. The last time he fucked you, he’d walked to your place and had worked up a little bit of a sweat before he arrived; the way his neck had tasted against your tongue almost made you come from that alone. He’s shaved down slick all the way to the taint – the way you like him, but you suspect it has more to do with his militaristic habit of staying clean shaven than your preferences – and you can’t help but tease your tongue past his balls, test your limits. Straight guys are so weird about this shit.

“Fuckin’ nasty,” he growls out, shifting in what might have been discomfort though the tone implied he was definitely turned on by the idea, and tightens his hand in your hair.

You grin into his crotch and take your shot, tongue laving to his ass for the mere moment he lets you before he’s pulling your hair with firm insistence, moving you back to where he can see you. You peer back up at him from under his cock in faux-innocence.

“Nuh-uh,” he scolds, but his mouth is tugged up at one corner in amusement, “You gotta buy me a drink first, darlin’.”

It’s a joke, or at least the closest thing to a joke the two of you have ever shared, and there’s a moment where you both chuckle and a warmth passes through you. He’s human, after all.

You don’t break eye contact when you open your mouth to catch the head of his cock on your tongue, moaning when you close your lips around his crown. Finally. He tastes the way you remembered and it’s so fucking good, the salt of pre-cum and sweat, that you moan around his flesh. His mouth hangs open stupidly but he’s watching you with those shark black eyes, both of you locked in a stare that neither one is breaking as you start swallowing him down slowly, bobbing down inch by inch, navigating the thickness of his shaft as not to make yourself gag – too early, anyway.

You nearly get nose-to-skin with his abdomen, the blunt head of his cock pressing insistent at the back of your throat, eyes watering when you hear him moan in earnest, voice breaking under the strain of lust that the both of you are beyond lost in. The sound is electric and one of your hands is straight between your legs, not even thinking about the action, hardly realizing it’s happening until you’re running tight little circles on your over-sensitive clit. He’s too lost in the moment to stop you, which he’d normally do – one of those edgers, the types who want to push and deprive, push and deprive like a typical fucking military man, obsessed with discipline – and you take advantage, buying yourself a little relief from the constant thrumming of your cunt in time with your heart, your pulse. He’s going to be the death of you one of these days…maybe literally if you aren’t careful.

The same hand that’s tangled in your hair and that was pressing you down harder a few moments ago pulls you back with graceless intent just short of roughness, his own breath coming in hard jags now as he stares down at you with those blown-wide pupils (not that you can tell, he’s got eyes damn near as black as his hair). You curl your slightly swollen lips into a smirk and open your mouth to smart off but then he’s got you hauled up off the floor and onto the bed, so fast and so smooth you didn’t even have a chance to resist. Not that you were gonna.

He’s a patient man. It’s kind of infuriating. Those big, calloused hands are pressing your thighs apart by the time you get a real sensibility about what’s going on and he’s moving in for the kill, looking you in the eyes without a hint of shyness or self-consciousness as he presses his tongue into your slick, aching slit. The sensation damn near knocks your chipped nail polish off. He’s not a tease, he’s not keeping the contact light but he’s slow, meticulous, rolling his tongue from your opening up to your clit and back again, unhurried. Attentive. What an asshole.

You squirm against him, panting out little moans and whimpers that make goosebumps run up and down his arms with sheer want, trying anything to make him go faster, keep building but he’s dead set on his plan of battle and you’re not going to change it. His groans shift between raw arousal and amusement, nearly chuckles against your hot, wet cunt as he alternates between a soft, flat tongue running slow, agonizing paintbrush strokes against your clit and pressing his mouth into you, entire, sucking lazily like the bastard’s not being hunted by every agency in the country and has all the time in the world to eat pussy like it’s his full time job. You hate him. You’ll stop hating him once you come but until then, he’s scourge of the earth.

You exhale in a growl of frustration, canting your hips to try to get some faster friction until he grabs them both firmly and forces them down to the mattress, a subtle reminder of just how strong he is.

“I fucking hate you,” you seethe through a moan, and he nearly laughs.

The vibrations almost send you over but he’s smart, pulls away just enough to reel it in and keep you from coming. What a motherfucker. You cry out in frustration and swat down at him but miss miserably, far too fucked up on his mouth on your pussy to focus well enough to land a hit. He doesn’t even react, just moves his hands back to your thighs and slips his thumbs to your sex to spread you open just that little bit more, let him get in a little deeper, a little more. He’s moaning soft but rough and the sound alone nearly kills you.

“Fucking hurry up,” you hiss through teeth.

Your mouth is getting dry from the panting, you notice.

“You gonna complain or you gonna come?”

The hoarseness of his voice sends chills up your already lit spine and you grab at his hair, push his face back into your cunt and he obliges with no hesitation, finally hitting the stride you’d been aiming for. Your hips hitch, the roll of your back stuttering with overstimulation, your every moan getting more and more ragged until they’re damn near screams, your hands knotting up the shitty comforter and your nails digging into the fabric. You wanna tell him to put those thick, rough fingers inside you – two at least – but he’s pinning your thighs down hard with both hands, thumbs keeping you slick and open to him, and it’s barely two more hard breaths until he’s sucking your clit and you’re coming, coming, coming.

There’s an affirmative grunt from him as he keeps going, knowing full well how sensitive you are after orgasm, how that kind of pace and contact is too much, but he also knows if he makes you work through the discomfort there’s usually a second one right around the corner. It took him no time to figure that out, and he’s quietly smug about it in his way. Your entire body is one giant, pulsing nerve and it’s pure instinct that drives you to push at his forehead and try to squirm away, anything to relieve the onslaught of sensation from his steady, unfaltering licking of your pounding clit but he’s not having any of it, doubles down his efforts. Over the slid-over hills of your breasts you can see him watching you, eyes darker still with arousal, something almost inhuman in how single-minded he is.

That’s Frank, whether he’s killing gangsters or hunting criminals or fucking you senseless – single minded to the point of ruthlessness.

The building crest of a new wave wracks you from your roots to your toes before you can even register that it’s coming, something more like a shotgun than a pleasant rise and fall.

You’re still catching your breath, swallowing dryly and blinking in bewilderment when he’s on his knees in front of you, so muscular and tan and scarred that it’s hardly like he’s real. Fucking him without a condom is stupid, but your IUD and his complete lack of regard for his own safety render the conversation unimportant and he’s one, two, three pumps of his fist around his cock before he’s pushing up the backs of your thighs to get your legs up and open. This is why he doesn’t finger you when he’s eating you – your pussy is so tight post-orgasm that it’s an effort to sink that big, thick cock in with all the resistance and he fucking loves it, loves how /you/ love it, how much louder you are when you’ve already come.

“Fuck,” you exhale, moving your legs with his efforts but otherwise unable to participate at the moment.

“Yeah,” is all he says back, one hand grabbing your calve as the other angles his cock directly against your entrance.

The blunt intrusion is almost too much, almost too big to handle in your current state and he hisses through his teeth only to exhale in a boom of a growl, feeding himself into you inch by agonizingly slow inch. Every nerve in you is alive with the glory of Frank and there’s nothing else in your mind but the fucking delicious stretch, satiating some primal itch as you try to relax well enough to speed this along, growing impatient. This is why he likes fucking you face-to-face: the angle of your hips and the way he can bend your legs gives him the clearest shot at getting in deep (he’ll turn you over in ten minutes, you know that, and even if he doesn’t do it of his own accord you’ll beg him to – you love the bruising force that he uses when he’s got you up on your knees and elbows). With long, drawn out moans of effort (either from holding back on bucking like he wants to or the tightness of your cunt or both), he finally slides home, bottoming out with his groin pressed into yours, buried deep enough that you can feel him nudge your cervix when he pushes in just the right way.

Luckily you’re one of those women who likes the way that feels, in so long as it’s not repeated and sustained. The occasional jolt is nice in the way that nails on your skin or the pull of your hair is nice. Frank’s got a rare instinct for both doling out and carefully metering pain and he has yet to hurt you in any way you didn’t like; maybe that’s part of the appeal of him. You know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he understands and respects the word “no”. He’s a well-trained dog – someone somewhere spent a lot of time and effort making sure he took orders well.

He pulls out just so and then snaps his hips back to yours in such a way that makes you quiver all the way to your toes. You don’t think much after that, at least not outside of the moment or him. You can smell his sweat from where you are, the combination of pheromones and his recently cleaned skin intoxicating, the clap of your flesh slapping into his with every sharp, hard thrust music to your ears; when he finally leans within grabbing range you’re tugging him down to lick the salt off his neck, his shoulder, your nails down his back and unkempt, wild moaning in his ear.

“Fuck,” he spits out when you dig in harder, “You like that? You want every fucking inch of that?”

You can’t form consonants but your moans are affirmative, nodding as you pant open-mouthed.

“Yeah?” his voice is harsh, possessed, and it makes you gush, “You wanna be fucked like this, hard and fucking fast?”

“Yeah,” you only half-manage, throat dry from all the open-mouthed caterwauling.

This is relatively tame as far as dirty talk goes but holy fuck it gets you close and you know he’s just now getting started. You’ve asked him to call you a slut in bed. He won’t do it. It pissed you off at first when you thought it was some sort of manly-man moral bullshit; it didn’t occur to you until you were trying to goad him into it and he got this look on his face like he had been slapped that maybe his dead wife had liked it too. You don’t press anymore.

The jiggling of flesh with every thrust up has you feeling deliciously corporeal, grounded, every inch of your body attuned to everything he’s doing. He holds that iron grip on your calf and turns his head to press an open-mouthed kiss to the skin above your ankle; for a moment you think he might bite you but he just growls, head hanging as you watch the muscles of his stomach, his hips flex and tighten, flex and tighten, flex and tighten. He’s at a pace nearing ruthless by the time he pulls out, the very sensation pissing you all sorts of off as your walls tighten on nothing but the sound of his voice.

“Turn the fuck over, girl,” he orders, which is pointless since he’s already got you by the hips, all but flipping you onto your stomach.

He’s so fast, there’s almost no time between his pulling out and having you right where he wants you, flat on your chest with your knees in the mattress, ass arched up just enough that he can line up his cock and thrust in deep without hesitation. The ragged moan that’s tearing out of you gets muffled by your cheek against the fabric, your head swimming with the shot of white-hot pleasure that corkscrews up your spine when he’s back in and pounding away, relentless. Those big hands come up and grab your shoulders roughly as he leans over you just enough to brace his arms that way, the weight of him pinning you down into the mattress and giving him the leverage he needs to keep his hips grinding hard and deep against your ass.

“Fuck look at that,” he grunts through clenched teeth, “Look at that ass bounce, goddamn…”

You taste the cotton with your grin, “Uh huh? Like that?”

“Uhhuh,” he spits out between deep groans, “Fuck, girl, you’re gonna make me work for it tonight, huh? You want me to throw my back out makin’ you come again?”

You both pass breezy laughs, the jump of your core making your pussy tighten on him and turning his back into a groan.

“I gotcha, I gotcha,” he groans, shifting his weight and putting one big hand just under the back of your neck to keep you flat while his other arm goes around your hips, fingers searching for your clit.

He doesn’t go straight in for the rub, instead scissoring his fingers around the joining of your lips, the pressure and jolt of sensation making you wail against the starchy comforter. Your back arches hard to give him resistance to slam into, your hands balling up the fabric as best you can without so much as a thought to it from you.

“Keep it arched up like that for me,” he mutters, nearly hoarse through a volley of other grunts, “Fuck, baby, fuck…”

Your moan is half a whine as another shot of pleasure rolls through you; he’s got you right there riding the edge with your pulse pounding and your pussy throbbing when he finally starts rubbing your clit with his fingers flat against you. It takes maybe four tight, fast circles and you’re coming, gushing, wailing. He’s still going hard and fast, fingers still passing across your oversensitive clit until you’re jerking from overstimulating, trying to grab at his arm and push it away, too exhausted to do anything but think about how good he still feels inside of you, how full and satiated and fucked-out you feel.

He moves both hands to your hips and grips them with bruising force to snap them back to him as he gasps, growls, pants. You barely have to coordination to breathe and think at the same time, heat still coming over you in waves, but you move onto your elbows to brace and push back against him, bring him the rest of the way with you.

He laughs, the sound hollow like a gunshot, and snatches you back against him again and again, “Thaaat’s right, that’s right, fuck yourself back on this cock, girl, you’re too good to me…”

He sucks in a sharp breath, voice breaking, “Fuck, take it, take it…”

His military precision falters and his hips stutter against yours as you feel that telltale jerking and spasming, the throb of his cock as he comes inside of you. You’re not sure why you like that so much, but you do. There’s weirder shit to like.

His orgasms aren’t loud, usually more a hiss through his teeth and a long, softer groan of exhaustion; he keeps you pulled flush against him until that throbbing stops and he only idles a few moments longer before pulling out carefully. It’s a detail you wouldn’t share in casual conversation but the usual volume of his come is impressively high – it was how you figured out he hadn’t been laid in a while the first time but now you’re not so sure it’s not just a biology thing, some guys are just big comers – and you can feel it leaking out of you slowly but instead of getting up, you lower your aching hips back to the mattress. Frank gets up with a grunt, scrubbing his hand over his face and disappearing back into the bathroom.

If you get a UTI, you’ll have no one to thank but yourself, so you groan and roll onto your back, preparing to pep talk yourself into standing up. You’re warm, pliant. Everything feels good except the ache in your lower back from having your hips arched so hard and even that’s got a nice, smug sensibility about it. As usual, he fucked you so good you know you’ll be sore tomorrow. That’s why you come here.

The toilet flushes, then the sink runs for a long moment before he’s coming back out, scrubbing his face dry with the scratchy hand towel. This is normal – he’s distant now but not disinterested or dismissive, just… somewhere else. As you struggle to sit up, he reaches out to help you, grabbing your hand and easing you to a sitting position, which you come up from with a long stretch.

“You need a cab or you crashin’?” he asks as you sit on the toilet seat, wincing from the cold contact.

The floor here is cracked and there’s mold on the baseboards, in the shower. You’d rather not sleep in this shithole but you don’t really wanna be alone just yet either.

“I’ll hang,” you respond once you’re well underway with trying to clean yourself up with the cheap paper, “For a while anyway.”

You pause your ministrations for only a moment and chew your lip, spitting out the question before you have a chance to overthink it.

“…why don’t you just come back to my place? It’s free, you can get the hell out of this joint for a couple days.”

There’s practically a sound effect of him freezing in the other room. You don’t have to see it to know he’s doing it, that rigid posture thing he does.

“…that’s probably not a smart idea,” he responds after a long moment before adding, “Not that I don’t like the idea.”

You shrug, trying not to seem bothered, “Just a suggestion.”

It’s not personal, you know that. He just doesn’t want the particular kind of hell that follows him to rain down on you, too.

It’s alright. You don’t want that kind of hell, either. It is what it is.

It isn’t until you’re climbing into the backseat of a cab in the wee hours of the morning that you realize that yeah, you did kind of take it personally. Maybe you won’t answer next time he calls.

The pleasant, worn throb between your legs reality checks you – _get real_. You know you will.

 

 

 

 


	2. Pray For Rain But Brace For Whiskey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The light that cracks into your sparse living room reveals no corpses, no monsters, no gangsters there waiting to take your life and the wad of cash in your bag. It’s business as usual – a few framed photos but not many, an ashtray with the barest stump of a joint, the newly acquired PS4 on the floor in front of your ratty armchair. The carpet is still stained and ugly, your rug is still unraveling where the goddamn vacuum keeps catching it, and the paint is still patchy and stained. It STILL smells like someone’s been cooking liver and onions below you (two years running now, nothing hides the smell)._
> 
> _Regardless, you get the distinct sensation you’re not alone as the door clicks shut behind you, an animal’s fear gripping at your throat and making your heart pound._
> 
> _“It’s me,” comes the rough voice almost warily, “Just me.”_
> 
> _Frank.  
> _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops.

Time passed. After 2 weeks, you figured that either Frank Castle had moved on to a different distraction, or he was dead. If he’d been apprehended, it hadn’t made the news.

Barely a week after the last encounter in that shitty motel room the feds seized the bar and everything in it, putting a quick and dirty end to your being employed. You’d walked down the sidewalk with your phone in your hand and when you’d glanced up to cross the street, it was all police lights and unmarked trucks. Counter-organized crime. Fucking thugs on either side of the line, however you wanted to split it. Sitting in your shitty apartment and watching the lights dance on the far wall as another bust went down in the bottom floor of the building, you seriously began to question your decision to stay in this city. Hell’s Kitchen was a lot of things – it had scrap and it had heart, to be sure, but the crime on one side and the gentrification on the other felt an awful lot like hands closing around your throat most of the time.

As it always does, the shit rolls downhill. Your landlord threatened eviction if you couldn’t come up with rent on time, nevermind that you had a stellar record of paying early when bartending was your main gig, and no jobs were open in bars you weren’t terrified to work at. Given the long string of mob-owned dives under your belt, a bar that had the capability to frighten you into not wanting to work there was a pretty goddamn bad bar.

You’d been a dancer before and it was good, even lucrative, before the economy bottomed out and even the strip clubs saw the hard times ahead. Lines of correlation nobody would have thought to have drawn – the Manhattan disaster in 2012 when the portal to space opened up and aliens fell in, and diminishing wages for exotic dancers. Alas, this is New York – the ecosystem here is tight. Still, you’d heard a few acquaintances say it was getting better year by year; granted, in the swanky clubs that people like Wilson Fisk would have owned and controlled, the money would have always been good. Those clubs are few, far between and picky like they have no right to be in who they allow on their stages, and suffice to say, you’ve never been high on the list of desirable dancers for the rich guy clubs.

Always a dive bar, never a five star.

You’re wondering about Frank the way you sometimes do when the shift was slow and the music monotonous, meandering across the floor in your Perspex knock offs when you overhear someone at the bar bust out with big news.

“Did you guys hear? The fuckin’ Punisher’s dead!”

Damn that sensation, like you’re dropping a plate on a marble floor and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Damn that hitch in your breath when you turned around, eyes wide, to stare at the bulbous asshole in his gold chain gesturing wildly while he talked on and on about an explosion, a boat, the cops, and Frank Castle presumed dead among the burned corpses in the water.

It seemed like something right out of a comic book; he wasn’t dead, right? Who the fuck actually dies in an explosion on a boat with the body unidentified and unrecovered? This was the most Batman shit you’d ever heard in your life.

“Sweetheart, you gonna offer me a lapdance or what?” asks the guy you didn’t realize was sitting near where you wobbled uncertainly, trying not to feel sick despite your best efforts.

You glance down. He looks like Merle Dixon, City Edition. Great. He tries to dry hump your ass and stiff you on tips, and you do your damndest to be upset about anything other than the idea that the fuckbuddy you haven’t been able to find a close orgasmic replicant of since is probably dead.

That’s what it is. He was fucking stellar in bed. Your vagina mourns his loss. You don’t give a shit…right? Other than in the capacity that any mortal person gives a shit when someone they knew dies? Reminders of your own mortality and all that jazz? Memento Mori? _No_? None of this working for us? Right.

Goddamn, though. He was amazing.

You bring home three hundred dollars and Chinese take-out on a Thursday night and find a blood smear on your door frame. The sight is jarring, of course, but it’s not going to stop you from going into your apartment. You’ve had junkies bleed on your door a couple of times now, this isn’t new phenomena, and it looks more like someone brushed against the door on their way down the hall than someone trying to break in.

The light that cracks into your sparse living room reveals no corpses, no monsters, no gangsters there waiting to take your life and the wad of cash in your bag. It’s business as usual – a few framed photos but not many, an ashtray with the barest stump of a joint, the newly acquired PS4 on the floor in front of your ratty armchair. The carpet is still stained and ugly, your rug is still unraveling where the goddamn vacuum keeps catching it, and the paint is still patchy and stained. It STILL smells like someone’s been cooking liver and onions below you (two years running now, nothing hides the smell).

Regardless, you get the distinct sensation you’re not alone as the door clicks shut behind you, an animal’s fear gripping at your throat and making your heart pound.

“It’s me,” comes the rough voice almost warily, “Just me.”

 _Frank_.

“Hi there, Nine Lives,” you respond through the cold shock, trying to keep your trademark wit intact when you were mystified by the entire evening’s turn of events.

“Guess you been watchin’ the news,” he says dryly, finally emerging from the shadows of your bedroom.

You were almost embarrassed by the ratty state of the wash towel wrapped around his fist, his tactical gear nowhere in sight but his tank top and pants damp, his hair rubbed half-dry. The fading bruises around his face – the prison escape, you figure, you’d heard it was gnarly – were a sickly green, twin crescents of brown under both of his dark eyes. There were new scars forming. Your stomach clenched – he looked absolutely ragged, but beneath the slowly waning shock of his presence? Unf.

“It’s been a fuck of a night,” you respond.

He snorts a half-laugh, a bitter and empty sound, but doesn’t respond except to hoist the towel gently.

“Sorry ‘bout this,” he says after a long moment before looking around the apartment, gesturing vaguely again, “And all this. Bargin’ in.”

You drop your bag onto the floor and finally toe out of your shoes – it was yoga pants, sneaks and a hoodie for the commute home, as usual – watching him as he moves back into your bathroom, the yellow light spilling into your dark bedroom.

“I’m gonna guess you’re layin’ low and don’t have anywhere else to crash?” you ask, coming to lean in the doorway.

His tactical gear is all over your bathroom, a vest hanging across the shower rod, his boots in the tub. You’d be offended by the sprawl of his mess if you weren’t a messy person already. You can’t help but notice that he’s got it arranged carefully, as if he’s trying to meter the explosion of things that weren’t yours in your personal space, trying to be as careful as possible in disrupting the ecosystem of your product-laden bathroom. Either he hadn’t noticed the pink vibrator on the sink’s edge or he just wasn’t drawing attention to it as he turned and leaned his back to the wall to face you.

“There were other places,” he admits after a long moment, “But your place is close by, and I needed to get off the street.”

Your eyes meet in the fluorescent light. He’s always been honest but vague, not interested in lying to you but not interested in telling you everything, either. You figured it was safer for you this way; if you were going to carry on with The Punisher, it was probably best not to ask what he was up to when he wasn’t balls-deep in you in some shitty hotel room.

You shift first, “I appreciate your candor.”

His stare only alters when he tilts his head down, crossing his arms over his chest. The shadows cut across the landscape of his muscles and reminded you of grabbing, pulling, pinning and being pinned. There’s a shadow of a bruise across the bicep you bit down on when he was on top of you, throbbing and growling and coming and coming and it took a moment for you to snap yourself back to reality, adjusting your posture and walking past him to look at the gear strewed across the bathroom.

“You were in big trouble, huh?”

“Was,” he confirms, voice raw, “Dead now.”

“Huh,” you remark while looking at the guns leaning in a galley along the wall, “You’re pretty spry for a dead guy, breaking into an apartment and all.”

“I am sorry for the intrusion,” he responds, somehow almost soft but not quite, “I’ll be outta here as soon as they stop patrolling the area. Gimme an hour or two.”

“Bullshit,” you respond, turning to look at him, almost surprised with yourself but somehow not quite either, “You’re sitting tight until morning, last thing I need is feds busting in my door if they see you leaving this building. They’ve been all over this part of the city since the Irish were killed.”

“You mighta mentioned that when you asked me to come back here.”

His tone isn’t clipped per se, but there is an edge beneath it. Is he calling you out for that momentary act of stupidity you’ve wished a thousand times had never left your goddamn mouth? Or is he needling you because he could somehow sense you regretted it? Was this foreplay or passive aggression? What in the absolute hell was even happening in your bathroom right now?

“You didn’t, so what does it fucking matter?”

The words leave your mouth before you’ve had time to chew them over, but you commit to them by the time they’re out. Frank doesn’t so much as flinch – was that the ghost of a smirk on his mouth, the bastard?

“Just sayin’.”

“Are you injured?” you change the subject, gesturing at the damp towel still wrapped round his hand, “Or did you clean up already?”

“I’m good, actually,” he responds, lower lip punch-swollen but otherwise seeming like he was telling the truth, “Hit the water before the damn thing went up, didn’t take much more than a couple’a licks.”

He knows you were looking at him. He’s looking at you. The dark mood of his first appearance has lifted; maybe he knows he was no longer in enemy company and could let his guard down, or maybe he came here for something different? Whatever the case, you opt to turn your back and head to the kitchen to find something to drink, maybe for the both of you. His surprisingly soft footsteps follow you.

“Surprised you didn’t move a little closer to that shithole you’re dancing in.”

The offhanded remark has both your eyebrows lifting as you turned back to stare at him incredulously, “…so you followed me to work but you couldn’t be bothered to say ‘hey, I’m alive’? Really?”

“I’m tempted to ask you if I owed you a ‘hey, I’m alive’, but I’ll cop to it, that was shitty.”

Frank moves around the kitchen bar, eyeing where the laminate is peeling away from its corner and opting not to lean against it as he comes to a stop. You glare back mightily before pulling shitty domestic beer from the fridge, tossing him a can rather than braining him with it like you wanted to.

“And?”

“ _And_ I was concerned that you were being followed, which you weren’t,” he reports back, cracking the top as though he really didn’t care what was in the can, “Just covering my bases while I laid low for a while, couldn’t afford a distraction.”

“Just what every girl wants to be known as,” you fire back, snapping back the tab on your own can, “A distraction.”

Frank takes a long, slow pull off the can, eyes never leaving you. It was a lot like having a dog, really – a lot of following you from room to room and intense staring, a sense of safety at their presence that you didn’t really notice until it was gone. Frank swallows and your mouth waters. The ache in your cunt at just looking at him had finally blown through the wall of shock at his presence, and you’re suddenly acutely aware of why you weren’t all that upset that he was here.

Wouldn’t be the first time your vag got you into some shit. Funny how often you think that when you’re thinking of him.

“What, you’re not flattered by that?”

His voice is characteristically flat but you can pick out the note of sarcasm regardless. This parry and thrust routine is growing irritating, and you slug down a few sips of shitty alcohol before setting the can down on the bar top.

“You come here to hide or did you come here to fuck me?”

Infuriatingly, he doesn’t flinch at that either, simply setting down his own can in response. He doesn’t look warm but he doesn’t look cold either, that distance that is always between you seeming shorter at the moment, as though he’s actually in the room instead of off in his own head. He’s only present when he’s fucking you, so this is a rare enough moment to note.

“That an invitation?” you note the husky turn in his voice, however hard it is to spot since he’s always gravelly.

That pisses you off. You throw the can into the sink and beer flies out with a hiss of carbonation, splashing against the counter.

“How about you answer a goddamn question?”

“No ma’am, I did not come here expressly looking to fuck,” he almost seems amused, doesn’t move an inch when the can slams into the cheap steel, his eyes still on yours with all sorts of dark hints in them as he lowers that tone to something like teasing, “But I wouldn’t say no if you asked real nice.”  

“I’m gonna punch you right in your smug fuckin’ face,” you threaten on autopilot, pushing off the counter toward him.

You meant to do it. Really. You know it’s not okay to go around hitting people but hey, Frank’s a punching bag on two legs and you know the motherfucker can take it, so it’s the first thought you have as you stomp toward him with real intentions of harm. And yet, the memory of proximity, the flashbacks of pushing yourself right into his space to be caught up in those ridiculous arms, those rough hands and raw sounds flood you by the third step and you damn near took him to the ground with how fast you were on him, one hand going up to snatch at his hair – longer now than you remembered – and the other finding his shoulder as you felt him move to receive you practically climbing onto him. His balance waivers for a moment and you remember he must be injured regardless of what he says, but it’s not enough to do more than make him replant his feet and fall back into the counter with a grunt.

He kisses you. You can’t remember if he’s ever kissed you on the mouth before. You’d like to think you would have, but somehow you don’t and even that’s an uncertainty. He tastes like shitty beer and a sharp tang of what might be blood in his mouth, coppery but faint enough not to overwhelm you. It’s kind of creepy how turned on this makes you – whatever. Best not to overturn that stone right now - just indulge instead. You’re good at mitigating the damage in the wake of your encounters with him and it’s not worth it for you to look this deeply strange gift horse – presumptive death, immediate resurrection, fly by night arrival – in the metaphorical mouth while he’s busy pushing his tongue into yours in such a way that it makes your head spin.

You’re wet. Uncomfortably wet. Goddammit. Goddamn _him_.

You’re pretty sure He already has. Not that you believe in that sort of shit, but if you did…well, there’s better ditches to end up in than what Frank Castle’s life has become.

Not the time, you sharply remind yourself when he presses up into you with as much coordination as he can fumble for given the awkward angle, drunk off the way his lips are rough and soft on yours all at once. He kisses you like he’s drowning but it’s somehow not sloppy, assertive but not domineering. Military man, through and through. You always did have a weakness for a fucking Marine – including the one in jail. Sharp as tacks, crazy as hell, perfectly comfortable being miserable – they’re two of a kind if you look at it too hard.

You don’t.

Those gravel-rough grunts send a chill up your spine and you throw what little weight you have compared to his around, trying to pull him across and against the wall, but he’s not having any of it and twists to put you flat on your back on the counter. It’s sticky. Your skin would crawl if he hadn’t already distracted you by snatching the hips of your yoga pants, pulling them down with urgency that has you panting, remembering hot nights in hotel rooms that made this apartment look like the Ritz-Carlton, remembering bunches of your clothes on the floor and the heat of his thick-muscled body against you. It’s got you purring out a rough moan when he dips back down to kiss you again – seriously, has this happened before? – with more tongue, more depth, authoritative but not inconsiderate, never inconsiderate, though he’s far less controlled than he was before.

You’re bare from the bunched-up t-shirt down when he slips off the soft cotton of your worn-in yoga pants, taking his hands off you only long enough to pull his own shirt up over his head. Your breath hitches when you see him in the dim light, bruises you had no idea where there littering his shoulders and ribs; you’d have never known from his gait if you hadn’t seen them for yourself. They’re blossomed out and healing, the color fading in the middle but the furthest rings still a bloody purple and blue. These weren’t from tonight. You’re well past the point of marveling at how Frank’s busted-up face and body turn you on so goddamn hard; staring him down, you feel wetness running down your cunt into your ass, clit throbbing as you look up to find his eyes settled on you.

You see it for exactly what it is, then. No more unanswered questions or half-truths, no more coy teasing that doubled as foreplay, no more push and pull.

He should have died in that explosion. He knows it. He’s riding high on the adrenaline of a violent death cheated once again. The autopilot instincts now have the reins and he’s looking at you like he’s starving, naked and vulnerable and not giving an eighth of a fuck as to how that would make him look any other time. It’s raw and intense and beautiful and hideous.

You avert your eyes first. The magnets on the fridge. The dirty dish towel on the counter by the stove. Anything but that coal black stare burning holes of need into you that you didn’t know you weren’t strong enough to withstand until this moment. He undoes his belt, you can hear the clinking, and grunts in frustration at the reality that you’re just a fraction too high on this bar for him to fuck you standing.

“Goddammit,” he hisses through his teeth, and you’re able to look back to find him less intimidating as he tries to do the mechanics on how exactly this is going to work – spoiler alert, it isn’t, so you sit up and move your hips down to the edge of the counter, the laminate edges digging into your skin but you hardly care, just trying to get the pieces aligned to get the party started.

Sitting up has brought you closer together and he’s quick to grab your hips, trying to help take some of the weight off of you as you slip down over the edge just far enough that he can buck up into you. He’s so hard it’s got to hurt, heavy and full and smearing wet across your inner thigh when he thrusts up, missing the mark but rubbing his shaft against the slick of your spread-open cunt, knees up and out.

“Fuck,” you mewl and he snarls, like actually snarls, when he finally gets his shot lined up and pushes the blunt head of his cock into your aching cunt. It’s like fireworks in your spine when he thrusts up with sudden caution, taking it a little bit slower than the previous few seconds would suggest. It doesn’t surprise you – Frank is big, he knows it and he goes out of his way to be mindful that any pain on your part is pain you asked for. He doesn’t mind hurting you if he knows it’s what you want, but as usual he’s on guard for signs that he might have misread something. One of these days you’re going to get him out of his head so fully that there’s no hesitation whatsoever; you know he’ll probably feel like shit afterward but part of you kind of wants that in a passive-aggressive way.

Your fingers curl around the edge of the shitty laminate and it feels sharp digging into the meat of your palms. The angle changes as you lift your hips and bear down, curling your back just a little, anything to get him in deeper. Your legs are shaking but you curl them around his hips to hang on when he starts slamming up into you, now abandoning all concern about your comfort momentarily. There were so many nights – alone with a vibrator or with a partner who failed to impress – that you thought about this, begged your mind to give you new memories or renewed sensation of what it had been like to fuck him. No one else had thrown down the pussy gauntlet quite like Frank Castle, and goddammit, you were certain he was gone for good until now.

Time to make up for lost time.

Frank seems only a little surprised when you put your weight on your arms and grind back onto him just as hard, just as ferociously as he’s thrusting back; his big, calloused hands are on your hips, snatching you back down onto him with a steady, deep rhythm. Suddenly you’re hyper-aware of the silence – the sound of nothing in your apartment save the slapping of flesh being forced together and the both of you panting, occasionally gasping or grunting with effort – that is somehow heightening the intensity of an already charged moment.

Your eyes flicker up to his face and your core tightens at the sight of him: lip curling up just a little while he mutters something incomprehensible but undoubtedly filthy under his breath, dark eyes fixed on watching his shaft piston into you, jaw clenching intermittently. Beautiful, severe. Ugly. Something inside of you – something that isn’t him anyway – surges and you’re growling through clenched teeth, using your shitty momentum to push back against him at a faster clip, forcing the pace upward.

“C’mon, come the fuck on,” you barely hear yourself through the rush of blood in your ears, “That all you got?”

His hands tighten on your hips to bruising force and you make the rookie mistake of looking him in the eyes. Dumb, foolish thing to do. Those twin-crescents of fading green-brown highlight the pitch dark of his gaze, and that darkness is On. Fucking. Fire. He’s narrowly escaped death. He’s hot on the trail of his last standing purpose. He’s lit up with the only thing he’s got left to give, and the intensity of it is utterly blinding.

Again, you want to look away first. You try to. But you can’t. You’re pinned by that stare, locked in some sort of primal challenge and as badly as you want to relent, close your eyes and just get swept away in everything that’s happening, you’re going to meet him there. You can’t do anything else.

His lip curls back up over his teeth in another half-snarl and he’s suddenly snatching your hips back harder to his, ruthlessly pounding into you. It feels amazing. It hurts, just enough. It’s perfect.

Until the other side of the counter detaches from the wall and flips up, sending what little shit you’ve got up there all over the floor. Just as the “!?!” hits you and you feel your support upend, Frank snatches you back and away from it lightning fast, one of his big hands across your back as he stares over your shoulder at the shitty piece of wood and laminate, flipped half onto the floor. A few small roaches scatter out from the pockets where the glue once was.

Your heart is pounding so hard you can hear it in your ears as you turn, stare for only a moment at the destroyed bar counter, and then turn to look at Frank. He stares back at you, eyebrows up in uncertainty but you feel him pulsing inside of you, still inside of you, and it’s game on again. Fuck the counter. He whirls around and pushes you up into the wall.

“FUCK,” you yelp when the wind gets crushed out of you by the force of his body against yours, the wall behind you. A few feet away, a picture you hung with a thumbtack (who the fuck bothers to find studs in a place like this) clatters to the ground and you hear the glass crack. It dawns on you to be pissed for only a split second because before you can even open your mouth again, he’s grabbing your thighs right beneath the knee to push your legs up damn near to your chest. You’re wide open as his arms go under your legs and you’re barely adjusted before he’s slamming back into you, this new angle letting him get all the way in.

Frank shoves up and all the way in – _all_ the way in – and every withdrawal and thrust is hitting your clit with pressure so intense and steady that you almost, almost ask him to stop. The words won’t form, curling onto your tongue but dying when your mouth falls open and you pant, gasp, stutter moans. Your eyes are rolling up. It’s so, so, so fucking good and you’re clinging to his shoulders, his arms, losing your ability to push back or put up resistance to be met. Tightness coils up into your belly and you swallow hard, your head thunking back to the wall as his forehead comes beside it, both of you reducing all awareness to the single point where you’re joined.

His mouth is near your ear and you hear him come unraveled, grunts and growls finally giving way to a real, unguarded moan that reverberates somewhere so deep inside of you that you can’t pinpoint it (but it’s about as deep as his dick, to be honest).

“Yeah,” you exhale, all you’re able to say before the world fucking explodes.

Full-body spasms wrack through you until your fucking toes are curling on nothing and you’re clinging to him for dear life. Bliss explodes through you as your clit throbs against the constant pressure of him; you don’t notice he’s buried to the balls in you and staying there until orgasm number two is over.

You didn’t hear yourself wailing, but you feel the vibrations in your chest and when you manage to swallow, your throat is raw. You feel his moans reverberating into the shitty drywall; you feel every pulse and twitch of his cock as he comes. Again, no condom. You really are a glutton for punishment. Maybe he is too.

It’s only a few moments into coming down that you feel the stretch in your lower back and thighs as it turns into a burning. Wincing, you pat Frank’s shoulder with a limp, ineffectual hand to signal at him to let you down; vague though it is, he understands implicitly and lifts you just enough to slip out and gingerly get you back down onto your feet. You can feel the slip of something warm running out of you, down your inner thigh, and it’s a pleasant throwback to that vaginally-cherished memory of the last time you had sex in that shitty motel before he disappeared.

“Some things never change, I see,” you murmur, shifting your weight from foot to foot to quell the soreness of your hips and glancing in the general downward direction.

Frank says nothing, a smirk nearly crossing his lips but dying somewhere on the way. He seems dazed, maybe a little lost in afterthought as he hikes his pants back up and zips lazily, either unable or uninterested in making a hasty exit. Presumed dead. Right. He’s not going anywhere until the heat dies down if he’s smart.

“Lemme get my gear,” he mutters, his hoarse voice like the tactile sensation of calloused fingers on your back, “I’ll be out of your hair.”

Maybe he’s not that fucking smart.

“Don’t be a fucking idiot,” you call back from the bathroom, halfway through the customary post-coitus piss and clean up, “Just sit down for a goddamn minute, Frank, you’re gonna get shot.”

There’s no response but when you wander back out with your only good robe on – thanks, TJ Maxx clearance rack – he’s still there, sitting on the edge of your ratty couch and rubbing the back of his neck. His eyes catch your feet and he glances up at you, mute in his appreciation as something you can’t quite put your finger on passes across his face. Longing, maybe. Nostalgia.

Whatever it is, you know he’s not seeing you. He’s seeing _it_.

“You’re not real good at the laying low, are you?”

Something like irritation replaces that look, and you’re relieved for it. It was starting to make your insides itch.

“The people looking for me?” he says, leaning back into the couch and staring at you, “If they find me here, they’ll kill you. End of story.”

“And you already led them here if they’re that good at tracking you,” you respond, and you’re surprised at how bitter you sound, “So I’d just as soon have you here and hope you kill them first.”

Frank doesn’t respond, just looks at you. It’s the same old song and dance: you kind of want to slap him, there’s some deep well of fear and panic inside of you that his entire maelstrom of a shitstorm situation brings closer to the surface but all you can do at present time is stare back, put up a decent show of not being afraid.

Frank knows you’re afraid. He’s not dumb. Standing, he crosses over to the only window with broken blinds and checks out. You hold your breath though you’re not sure what you’re expecting to happen; maybe a bullet will fly through the window and straight between his eyes? Your walls will suddenly get peppered with gunfire? Your front door kicked in by men in black? Didn’t you once say you’d rather die than have a boring life? What the fuck were you thinking?

“I’m gone in the morning,” he finally concedes, turning to look at you as the blinds snap shut.

And he is.

 


	3. Got a Picture and a Password and a Number

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The world needed more absolute duplicity, by your estimation. Too many grey areas._
> 
> _Speaking of grey, there’s a homeless man on the corner with a grey hoodie half-zipped, elbows on his knees, his long dark hair curling in knots and blowing around in the stiffening wind. He’s watching something down the street and you can’t see his face but goddamn if there isn’t something deeply, deeply familiar about the curve of his neck, his broad shoulders, the hands clasped in front of him as he idly watches a boat cross the water from across the way. Maybe he feels your eyes on him, maybe he’s just taking a cursory glance as you walk up close but the timing is right and he looks up at you just as you stare down at him._
> 
> _It’s Frank._
> 
> Angry sex. 
> 
> (cw: consensual, conscientious roughness/roughhousing/choking)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHOOPS welcome to my personal hell
> 
> Come talk to me about Frank Castle at http://noccalula-writes.tumblr.com
> 
> x  
> Noccalula

 

_I am this great, unstable_   
_Mass of blood and foam_   
_And no emotion that’s worth having_   
_Could call my heart its home_

  * _Autoclave by The Mountain Goats_



 

 

The Punisher is presumed dead.

It doesn’t matter that you saw him the very night he theoretically died when a boat exploded hours after it happened: the new line you tow is the same as the rest of the city. Frank Castle, The Punisher, is a dead man. The sightings, the whispers of his continued holy war on the dregs of New York City is just conjecture, the ramblings of a city that loves to lose itself in its own mythology. Frank Castle is Ares for some, a War God streaked with the blood of righteous kills. To others, he’s the devil himself, regardless if that other asshole in Hell’s Kitchen wears the horned helmet.

For all you know, it’s the truth. You haven’t seen Frank since he left your apartment the morning after, and technically you didn’t even see him then. You just awoke to a side of the bed that was empty and cold and a few new bloodstains where some fresh wounds had apparently opened again during the night. You cursed his name, rubbed some Tide stick on that shit and hoped for the best. The stains never came out. Really, though, this is fine – you’ve moved in the many months since that night and your last act in that shitty apartment was to throw away everything gross you could live without until you could afford better replacements.

You finally caught the eye of a manager for a club in the better side of town, the one with better money. To be fair, you weren’t sure it wasn’t just process of elimination; you certainly had dancers at your old club that you thought were prettier than you but most of them had drug habits, ties into the club’s management (and probably organized crime). The fact that you avoided coke like the plague and barely drank meant you were more valuable property – you still looked young enough to be viable, and you were exceptionally good at keeping your head down, getting in, doing your job and getting out. Another mass exodus of dancers for Florida, aka Easy Money, meant job vacancies, a rare patch of opportunity in the ebb and flow of an economy still struggling to regain its footing. You were nearing thirty but could pass for twenty five with the right makeup, younger in dim lighting.

God knows that was what all these guys were after. Younger.

However gross, the new club was a step up in terms of working conditions. Cleaner backstage, better money, richer clientele. Three weeks into your new venue, you found yourself grinding your ass back onto the boner of a newly minted NFL quarterback and made easily five grand that night alone. You had yet to replicate that success on the regular but nights like those weren’t an anomaly, not constant but not unheard of either.

Better money meant better apartment and one closer to the club at that. A decent condo that wasn’t proportionately all that much more expensive than the shithole you were previously in, especially when you factored in money saved on cab fare. You still took them like any New Yorker but far less frequently, a slew of small restaurants and independent stores all within walking distance of your roach-free apartment. It was a quiet complex with a gate in the front and a guard on security in the parking lot, a lot of clean beige and white walls but you’d been able to jazz it up with various thrift store and flea market finds. Hell, a few rooms looked like you could post them on Pinterest once they were cleaned up enough – live plants hanging near the windows, little tchotchkes on IKEA shelves, your books in a stack on the floor beneath the windowsill. It was a better life than the one you had, and so help you, you were pretty content with the way things were going. You even had a casual boyfriend – someone you weren’t necessarily monogamous with but could see regularly enough to sate off sexual appetites or the urge for companionship. He was alright.

Alright would at least butter the bread until something better came along, anyway.

Or, y’know…until Frank showed back up.

To be honest, you half expected to never see him again. This had been a place of solace for a man who you only gradually came to realize had lost everything – you knew more about him from media coverage than you ever did from conversations the two of you ever had. Dead wife. Dead kids (the fucking horror of it all). Dead life, everything he’d ever loved snatched from his hands and a bullet parked in his brain that would make sure that what the prosecution was mindful to point out was likely a lifelong predilection towards violent sociopathy was now a permanent injury he would never overcome. There might have been a lack of empathy at his nature, you figured, but the light-switch ability to turn it on and off? That had to be a gunshot to the head. Was there anyone out there who was really like that? Wasn’t it either ‘you care about things’ or ‘you could watch all the things die and not give a shit’?

The world needed more absolute duplicity, by your estimation. Too many grey areas.

Speaking of grey, there’s a homeless man on the corner with a grey hoodie half-zipped, elbows on his knees, his long dark hair curling in knots and blowing around in the stiffening wind. He’s watching something down the street and you can’t see his face but goddamn if there isn’t something deeply, deeply familiar about the curve of his neck, his broad shoulders, the dirty hands clasped in front of him as he idly watches a boat cross the water from across the way. Maybe he feels your eyes on him, maybe he’s just taking a cursory glance as you walk up close but the timing is right and he looks up at you just as you stare down at him.

It’s Frank.

You stop walking.

He stares for a long moment, mouth falling slightly open somewhere in the forest of a particularly girthy beard – seriously, that’s a fuck of a beard – but he doesn’t say anything at first, the two of you locked in a stare on the sidewalk.

Your first thought is, how awful, he’s finally fallen all the way down. Then, better sense kicks in and you know this is probably a ploy. He’s either hiding from someone or trying to stay off the radar. Frank does very little by accident, you know this about him as a lover and as it always does, the fact tells you a lot about him as a man. He’s calculated, careful.

But he wasn’t counting on this, and neither were you.

“Hey,” he manages to croak through his hoarse, rough voice.

The sound alone gives you enough chills to get you wet even if he looks like every bum in the city, just a much cleaner version. Jesus H, did you miss that voice. It bothers you to realize how much.

It occurs to you that you’re probably about to be seen inviting a homeless man into your apartment. Your doorman is going to stare at you like you have two heads. Oh fucking well.

“I take it you need food and a shower?” you ask as evenly as possible given the circumstances, aiming for a little more detached and falling shorter than you’d like, “Or y’know, loose change?”

He screws his face up at you a little bit, unsure if rebuking you on the street is smart. You regret the barb a little, it was shitty of you, but you don’t move to make amends as you wait to see what he’ll do.

“S’been a while,” he offers mysteriously, dark eyes still scanning you as he shirks the ratty blanket off his shoulders.

The blanket covers the lie he’s most definitely telling from public view – his clothes are relatively clean and so is his face. Knowing Frank he’s showering at a gym somewhere when he’s not crashing in whatever hellhole he can rent or squat in unnoticed; he was always good at finding a hole to lay in when need be. Marines. Professional misery-lovers.

Your old man had gotten another six years added to his sentence for stabbing someone in a fight in his cell block. You knew then that he wasn’t getting out. He’d die in there, sitting tight in the grave he dug for himself. You cut contact altogether three months ago and decided to move on.

You think of him for that brief moment when you watch Frank hoist his army-green pack onto his back to walk beside you, pulling his hood back up with his free hand.

There’s questions you’re dying of curiosity to ask but there’s also no doubt in your mind that you’ve got a snowball’s chance in hell of getting a real or comprehensive answer. That part of his life – the bulk of his life – is behind a locked door where you can neither see nor are you invited in. That’s not the role you play for each other, never has been, and you’re trying very hard to just be grateful for the fact that he was still alive and right next to you and would, most likely, fuck you so hard you saw stars once you got him off the street.

Blessed fate.

The doorman does indeed look at you with something like shock and terror when this hulking man with his rather virile beard holds the door for you, looking like anyone you might see sleeping outside of a train station. You don’t say a word, just offer him the customary smile as if nothing was different and usher Frank along toward the elevator. When you look back he’s taking a cursory glance around – looking for cameras, maybe, or just to see if he’s been noticed by that many people. His eyes seem…darker? No, that’s not right, maybe lighter? No, that’s not it either.

Just different.

Maybe it’s because you’ve almost never seen him without a black eye.

“They chargin’ you the royal price for this joint?” he asks gruffly once you’re both alone on the elevator, and he glances up as if to indicate the whole building.

You scoff, “Not a whole lot more than the rathole, all things considered.”

You’re half expecting some smart ass comment about fancy living, like he’s gonna tease you since he’s the only person in the building who knows what you came from. Frank was in your old apartment, if he remembered it at all he remembered that it was a cockroach infested shithole you only ever felt vaguely less unsafe in than you did outside on the street. But he doesn’t. Frank eyes the elevator until the doors ding and steps out after you, taking what you’re sure is a tactical assessment of the hallway before he follows you across and down to your door. Was he always this paranoid? Are you only just now noticing it?

Of course he was. He was always being hunted. Even now, presumed dead, he’s not safe. Looking over his shoulder is probably going to be par for the course of the rest of his life, and yours too if you keep fucking courting danger the way you like to.

Once you’re both safely in the living room and behind a locked door, his expression finally changes to something more impressed, one hand coming to scrub down over his beard.

“Damn, girl, you traded up in a real big way. Win the lotto?”

Tossing him a vague and bitchy glance – he likes that, you notice it catches his attention when you’re a little ruder, it always did – you put your purse on the table and go to the fridge to fish out two beer bottles. “I got a different job.”

“Nah, you got the same job, just in a better place.”

You look up at him with an eyebrow crooked to find him leaning against the kitchen bar, still peering around at all your new, clean things.

“Were you keeping tabs on me, Frank?” you ask with surprise and a little bit of bite, probably owing to the fact that you don’t hate that idea. Fuck. How gross. What’s wrong with you.

“Just makin’ sure nobody tried to dust you for keeping the wrong company. Kept enough tabs to make sure you weren’t in a ditch somewhere.”

You aren’t sure if that’s conscientious and considerate of him or too grim for you to find a silver lining. He’s not wrong, you know that much – his constituents don’t last long and if his wife is any indication, his personal choices probably don’t either nowadays. Shit, you might not be the only one.

In as un-coy a way as you can summon, you hand him one of the beers and shrug, moving to lean opposite him against a table, “Oh yeah? That have you running all over the city then, making sure all your casual fucks are still kicking?”

Frank snorts and sips from the bottle for a moment, scrunching his nose in that way he always reflexively does before he shakes his head and peers unsubtly down the hall towards your bedroom, “Yeah, you’re funny, I’m a real Lothario these days.”

“Surely there were others,” you offered, taking your own slow sip and watching him for any signs you might pick up of discomfort, of secrets well kept.

Frank’s face does change, softens a bit as he readjusts his grip on the bottle, pulling the hood off of his head, “Uh, yeah, actually. There’s one person I had to check up on but it’s, uh…” He pulls the beanie off his head, his surprisingly long hair a mess reaching in all directions, and you fight the urge to walk over and smooth it down with some weird jolt of affection the sight strikes in you.

“It wasn’t, uh,” he gestures between the two of you with his bottle, “ _This_. It wasn’t like this.”

While that sentiment could mean several things and in the context of a romantic comedy might in fact mean something special, you get what he’s saying and take it at face value. He wasn’t sleeping with her. She’s clearly got some affectation on him judging by his face, the way his voice softened just that bit, but if she’s a lover she’s an unconsummated one.

You imagine that for a moment, Frank pining away for some woman that for whatever reason he won’t touch. It doesn’t make much sense. There is chicken in your freezer less freshly dead than his family. Whatever it is, it’s something you’re clearly not meant to unravel – it’s not for you.

“So you were on my usual commute just on coincidence today?” you ask, feeling brave enough to venture such a presumptive question.

Frank fixes that stare at you and curls his mouth into something that might be a smirk, “Pleadin’ the fifth.”

Motherfucker. You narrow your eyes at him just a little though, as usual, his mannerisms tug at some fondness poorly buried, familiarity having bred an affection of some kind. Still, you’re not about to turn on the sweet charm for him or anyone else, that’s not how you do business, and the two of you always start like this: cagey, combative but almost playfully so.

“You need a shower?” you ask, almost facetiously.

“Do I look like I need one?” he retorts but it’s half a legitimate question, a shrug on those broad shoulders, “I got a place, thanks.”

“I figured as much. You dig yourself a foxhole in Central Park?”

“Still funny, I see. Good to know.”

You shake your head and his face almost… softens? Maybe? That’s not really the right word for it, but the guard does come down just enough that you can tell he’s serious when he gestures around to the living room, the kitchen behind him.

“I mean it. You did real good for yourself. I’m glad.”

This kind of surprises you. It’s genuine, Frank doesn’t bother with bullshit, but it’s still surprising when he acknowledges your growth. The two of you have been limited to fuck and run for so long with some sort of weird strands of connectivity in between that it seems strange for him to have an opinion on your life. Any opinion on your life, really. The last apartment was disgusting but did he really have a leg to stand on in thinking of it that way? Would you have kicked him out if he’d pointed it out?

When did you gain the option of having opinions about one another’s lives and choices? Or was this as one-sided as always, limited to him alone, never extended to you?

Fuck that.

“I mean, I guess you did good for yourself too?” you start before immediately pulling back the acrid tone of your voice, surprised by how snide it sounds leaving your mouth, “You killed everybody. You did the whole bloody-end revenge thing. You actually _did_ it.”

Frank’s face darkens and he cuts his eyes away, taking another long pull from the beer in a way that looked an awful lot like he was avoiding talking. Anger starts to unfurl its buds into full blossom in your chest.

“What’s the fuckin’ matter, Frank? You get a clear window into my life, I can’t make a comment about yours?”

“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talkin’ about,” he bites back, the gravel in his voice a little more apparent when he abruptly sets the bottle down on the counter like he’s leaving, “Thanks for the beer.”

“Really?” You hear your own voice go up in pitch and, oh, here we go. Your temper is legend when provoked – you’ve got your mother to thank for that. There’s a few quick steps and you’re between him and the door, as if there were any chance in the bluest of hells that you could ever stop him from leaving if he were truly set on doing so. “ _Really_? Oh, right, I forgot, this only revolves around _your_ schedule. You get to show up when you need to put your dick somewhere, to hell with me and my plans.”

He stops short after a step to stare you in the face, that hair askew and the beard somehow making his face seem huge. Frank’s already a big man and this has been a point of delight for you on more than one occasion; if you were less assured of him and where you stand, you’d have the good sense to be afraid of this confrontation.

But this is Frank Castle, and he might be a mass murderer but you know you have nothing to fear from him. He is not the specter in the newspaper. He is this flesh and blood man that is now glowering at you five feet from your apartment door, looking like he’s choosing his next words and actions very mindfully.

“Shouldn’t have come up here,” he nearly mumbles, pointing one thick finger at you and you feel your face flush hot, your heartbeat pick up as you think _the audacity_ , “Never heard not _one_ damn complaint from you for you to be this pissed off about it.”

“God forbid I say something to you about something other than where I’ll meet you to fuck, Frank,” you barb, “I mean, you get to know where my apartment is and what club I work at and what I’m ‘doing for myself’, but we don’t talk about you, right? Your shit is sacrosanct, can’t touch it with a ten foot pole!”

“Alright,” he huffs hard with a scoff, going to move past you with a series of heavy stomps to the door.

You reach out and snag his arm, pull at him to turn him back to you. You’re fighting now. He doesn’t get to walk away. Despite that he could keep going, he lets himself get yanked back just enough to turn around and stare you dead in the face and while it’s confusing – he doesn’t _have_ to participate in this, does he? – it’s not enough to knock you off your tracks.

“It’s bullshit, Frank, I’m not here for –“

“What do you want from me!? Huh!?”

His voice has suddenly gone about three feet deeper and harsh, so gravely it’s almost comical, and you can’t help it – a knot of fear twists tight in your gut. Men are frightening enough on their own in close quarters when they’re angry; multiply that by twenty when they raise their voices. Frank’s got a yell on him like a monster lives in his throat and you have no control over the visceral chill of alarm that knocks all the way into your knees. You stare at him, eyes wide, and he leans in at you while pulling that bark down into a seething growl straight through his teeth.

“What the fuck do you want from me? I ain’t got a goddamn thing worth giving you, there’s nothin’ worth telling you about because it’s all the same shit over and over! It-it’s blood and it’s bullets and there is _NOTHING_ inside of me that you want in your head!”

His eyes pierce dark into yours and you swallow harder than you wanted to, afraid and unwilling to show him an ounce of that fear. It’s half pride – you don’t want to look vulnerable in front of anyone, ever, this is a lifelong battle you’ve fought – and half out of some misplaced concern about what will happen to him when literally every person he speaks to privately is afraid of him and he knows it.

What monster he might become then. Maybe not even that. How sad, how lonely it would be.

And you hate yourself for this, you would never admit it to anyone outside of this apartment, but that fear? It’s quickly shifted into arousal. Your ears are pounding with your pulse and he is so close to your face but the rise you’ve gotten out of him is brand spanking new and almost fascinating. You can feel your cheeks getting as red as his neck is flushing now.

Your face screws up like there’s something bitter in your mouth – aside from your feelings anyway – and you step back into his sphere like you’re going to square up at him. He doesn’t move, doesn’t give you an inch, and you feel like a chihuahua going in on a pit bull.

“I didn’t ask you to fuckin’ _elope_ , Frank, I’m just sick of being the place where you fucking unload when you can’t give me the time of day otherwise!”

It happens without you thinking about it and in retrospect, this is a part of yourself you might want to sit down and have some quiet time with: you brace your hands on his shoulders and shove him back hard, barely enough to stagger the big man but enough. His eyes widen at you with only the slightest surprise; then you shove him again and you see something in them that you still can’t put a name on as he snaps into a motion so fluid and quick that it takes your brain seconds afterward to catch up. His hands snatch at your wrists and bind them tight, pulling your arms down and preventing you from going in at him again. He grunts and seethes, doesn’t twist your arms or hurt you but keeps that iron grip on your wrists, making you feel utter rage at how helpless you are against that strength.

“STOP,” he orders with more authority than you’ve heard him use, and it makes you so goddamn mad you could piss the floor.

“FUCK you, Frank!” you spit, heart pounding as you try to wrangle your wrists free while still feeling somehow like you’ve left your own body.

He lets your wrists go and stares at you, huffing out his nostrils like an angry bull, and you stare daggers back up at him. The gap between you is a sliver now thanks to your tussle. You’re both breathing hard and staring one another down like a fistfight is about to break out.

It’s fucked up. It’s not healthy. It’s not good.

But it is inevitable.

You don’t know who moves first, him or you, but suddenly your faces are crushed together so hard you knock teeth, you can taste blood on his mouth when you open yours to take his tongue. Those big, rough hands are on you, one tangled viciously into your hair and the other grabbing you at the hip to force you to stumble backwards. Your back hits the door with a thud and he’s against you, all two hundred plus pounds of muscle and anger, smushing you between himself and the painted metal so hard that you struggle to suck in a breath when he finally breaks the harshness of the kiss, dips to bite your neck with bruising force.

“Ah!” you hiss, heaving half a moan as you grab hold of that hair and yank, pull his head back enough to force him to look at you.

He’s red faced, black eyed like a fucking demon somewhere under all that beard, all that hair, and the two of you lock eyes for only a moment of silence when you realize he’s breathing hard too, staring you down, waiting for something.

Permission.

Always gotta be sure.

You nod. He nods back.

It’s fucking on.

Suddenly you’re snatched away from the door and your coat is being shoved down your shoulders, your head spinning as you start snatching at the zipper of his hoodie. It’s a fucking blur, so goddamn fast that you barely process what’s happening, so fast that you forget to breathe more than once until you’re snatching away from bone-deep kisses to suck in air as clothes get torn off you like a peel off an orange. His beard scratches, feels foreign, but you recognize his lips, his ferocity. Ruthless. Some things never change.

He’s got you lifted, legs around his waist and skirt hiked all the way up, when he hits his knees in the soft carpet. You hit your back with a “oof” of surprise – right here, on the floor, between the kitchen bar and the couch with the bed in clear sight if you lean your head back enough. He can’t wait. Neither can you.

The grunt in your ear has you soaked by the time he sits up just enough to get his belt off, get his pants down. Neither one of you is naked, your tits spilling over the cups of the bra you are thanking your lucky stars both that you opted to wear today and that he didn’t choose to snatch off of you the way he always used to – this shit is expensive. His shirt is off but his pants hang down just enough for him to get his cock out, harder than you ever remember seeing him, so hard it’s got to hurt and your mouth waters for the smear of precum he strokes down the shaft with one hard pump.

Fuck.

That thick upper lip curls into the almost-snarl you still see in your hottest dreams and he spits into his hand, the other snatching your panties to the side. Your toes literally curl.

He gasps and then laughs when he finds you soaked, hissing in through his teeth, “Fuck, you’re ready to _go_ , don’t need my help.”

“Shut up,” you barb back but the bitter seethe from before is gone, both of you so preoccupied by flesh-rending lust that there’s no time to be an asshole.

When he fucked you after you first met, it was almost never face to face. He took you bent over your desk, pressed against the wall, from behind or with him on his knees and you on your back. It wasn’t until he turned up in your apartment the night of the explosion that you ever remember being kissed, looking him right in that busted-ass face when he fucked you raw on your counter, against the wall.

This time is new entirely. He bends down and presses over you, chest to chest except you’re too short to see more than his throat at this angle so he arches just enough that you can see one another.

In broad daylight, on your pristine carpet, he thrusts up into you and wraps his hand around your throat and you almost come instantly.

Somewhere in the throb of your blood rushing into your head you hear him laugh, hollow wind through a field of empty metal pipes, as your thighs jerk and spasm and you come once purely from the intensity, the anger, the thickness of his impossible girth slamming into you exactly the way he used to make you beg for. It’s risky, going this hard this fast, but it paid off – you don’t even come down from the first one, his relentless rhythm keeping you on the metaphorical ledge until your body is able to be strummed up into a second orgasm.

You blink your tangled lashes, vision coming clearer as you stare up at him, your nails streaking hard across his back as he hisses and grunts, growls like an animal rutting hard into you, his heavy balls slapping against your swollen cunt every time.

You can see the lines on his face. There’s no flattering lighting, no half-dark hotel room or dim apartment, no bedsheets to tangle yourself in and hide. He can see the lines in yours, too, and you know it. He looks older than you remembered, streaks of silver in that beard that you hadn’t noticed from a distance, but his face is the same as the last night you saw him: raw, pained, on fucking fire. Those big dark eyes set over that jagged nose, his jaw clenching as he pounds into you hard, the skirt halfway up your ass the only thing keeping you from getting carpet burn.

It feels so fucking good your eyes roll. Maybe you’re moaning, maybe you’re screaming, maybe you’re not making any noise at all – it’s blinding when the head of his cock strikes so deep it hurts, lighting your spine up as you draw your knees up to his sides. The rough callouses of his palm, his fingers, the way his thumb rests just below your pulse point is barely heavy enough to register, like he’s testing the water for this new thing on top of a rough fuck on the floor. His eyes bore into you, asking again.

You reach up to grab his forearm, pulling his hand down with some force against your throat and effectively cutting your air in half.

He doesn’t hesitate. That grip tightens, his face hovering above you grotesque and sweaty and red and so fucking hideously beautiful, so fucking perfect. So sexually riveting that it’s revolting. You gush, clench hard around him and he moans like the sound is tearing out of the pit of his stomach; he dips down to bite into the apple of your tit half out of your bra and shelved up with expensive lace. Keening dies somewhere in the squeezed-out tunnel of your throat and comes out a whimper on your tongue.

One arm is braced on the carpet above your head, the other hand still tight around your burning throat as his unforgiving pace pushes you closer, higher, tighter; your head is light, swimming, robbed of air as you feel your legs go to jelly again and your nails dig in hard enough to leave marks. He’s back up and staring at you, watching you so carefully through the brutality of those bottomless-pit eyes, and you know he’s gauging the red of your skin, the pinkening in your teary eyes, your face. The dare in your eyes makes him calibrate that grip just the smallest bit tighter; his thumb and forefinger could meet behind your head if he tried hard enough, those hands are so goddamn big.

His pace hitches when he shifts his weight and you whimper, gasp, swallow and feel the iron grip of his fingers.

Frank groans, growls, roars open mouthed when he starts fucking back into you so hard it hurts your pelvis and it’s over, between the vicious orgasm that battering-rams itself through you and the lack of air the whole world goes black for just a second before he lets go of your neck and the sweet flood of oxygen makes everything sparkle again. You suck back air like you’re coming up from underwater and tighten on him so hard that his moan sounds like surprise, your hand clutching at the thick muscles of his arm.

He presses in at the limit of depth and comes like a war crime, the filthiest, rawest noise spilling out of his mouth.

You watch the whole thing happen in real time with that lightheaded sweetness coloring your view; his face contorts, you can feel his cock twitch and throb inside of you as he empties out with rough, jagged moans of something like disbelief.

In broad daylight. On your floor. With half your clothes still on.

He holds himself carefully to pull out, moaning as he watches his cock slip out of you. Typical to trade, an impressive volume of cum starts leaking down your hot, pounding cunt into your ass, puddling in your bunched up skirt.

He looks down at you, still trying to catch his breath.

The only word you can grapple for is “obscene.” This is the most obscene thing you’ve ever done.

You’ve had nastier sex, been bent into stranger positions, fucked in the daylight and outside and with all the lights on but for whatever reason, this takes the cake.

Any traces of the anger in his face from before are long gone and he’s almost contemplative-looking as he pulls his pants back up, leaving them undone as he tucks himself away. It occurs to you that you’ve never gotten a good look at him right after the two of you finished, mostly you slipping off to the bathroom or him getting up to pace like a caged jungle cat. With more grace than a man that big ought to have, he scoots until his back is against the kitchen bar, one hand scrubbing over his face as he blinks like he’s trying to come back from somewhere.

You sit up on your elbows, panting, knowing a quick trip to the bathroom is in order but also suspecting that if you walk away you’re going to come back to an empty living room.

Instead you curl your legs up beneath yourself, hike your skirt back down and hope the dry cleaners won’t look at you sideways when you bring in a wiped down but unmistakable stain. Sitting up, you rake a hand back through your hair as best you can, smoothing it habitually while your vision rests on his boots, never unlaced.

It feels like forever of silence before he clears his throat, “You okay?”

You nod slowly, still coming down, and look him in the face. There’s something soft there, a countenance you’ve seen once before but knew wasn’t for you but for some distant memory he was living out between his own ears. This time you aren’t so sure.

You also aren’t sure that Frank Castle knows how to apologize given that most grown men fucking don’t, but then he does.

“Sorry if I, uh, really pissed you off before,” he puts his elbows on his knees and you look at his hands, which are surprisingly elegant looking considering how calloused, how violent they are. There’s a lot to Frank in broad daylight that you missed from never taking the time to look, “Wasn’t tryin’ to, you know?”

His voice is raw but softer, more a grumble than a growl, and you shake your head.

“Dunno what that was about, sorry,” you offer as you knew you would, you’re a woman, you apologize for shit that’s not your fault all the time no matter how often you try to make the effort not to.

To your surprise, he shakes his head, wetting his lips, “Don’t be sorry, you’re right. I can’t come in and out like there’s a dog door and get pissed off when you talk to me like I’m somebody.”

Weird.

Also weird: the way you uncertainly ask the question before you’re even sure what you’re doing, “You hungry?”

The weirdest thing? How he hesitates like he’s going to make an excuse – your first assumption, as you kick yourself for being stupid enough to ask – before stopping himself cold and nodding.

“Yeah, I am.”

And then The Punisher stayed for dinner, fucked you against the headboard in your bed, and actually said goodbye before he pulled on his boots and left this time.

What in the hell.

 


End file.
